The Nicholas Negroponte program "One Laptop per Child" which was designed to "empower the children
of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to
every school-age child", has a special program going on through the end of the year.

If you buy one laptop for a child somewhere in the world, you get another one for free. You can keep this one, or give it to a child you know, or donate it, etc. Or, you can simply buy one and let them send it to a child in need.

The all in cost (with shipping) is $423, but $200 is tax deductible. Plus, you get a free year of T-Mobile Hotspot access with your purchase.

Although I haven't owned a Crackberry since their very first device came out (and all of us hotshots at CNET wanted one because Halsey had one), I still have always used an email-enabled PDA or phone, so I'm essentially just as addicted as actual Blackberry users.

This article pretty much nails it in regards to how addicted we Americans (especially) are to our email and devices. Always on.

"The first casualty is home life. The BlackBerry user is never really at
home. He may be in the room, but his mind is at work. The temptation to
check is too great, even if you're meant to be cooking supper or
bathing the kids."

"The line you almost never hear is "my employer makes me carry this
thing". The truth is, we're doing it to ourselves and this is surely
the BlackBerry's most pernicious feature. A whole cohort of workers are
turning themselves into virtual slaves, on duty day and night for no
extra payment. Their work now intrudes into their bathrooms, their
bedrooms, even their sleep. The mobile device was sold as a form of
liberation: now your office can be the beach. The trouble is, it's
turned the beach into the office."

I try to get away from checking my 8525 if I'm able, but I do inevitably get sucked in all the time, checking emails again and again.

I posted a while back on my purchase of a Razor phone to use on the weekends, and often I do use it. Aside from being small, it's great because it has no email access. I'm free from checking it.

One of the things I dislike most, although I've occasionally done this myself, is when people are checking their Crackberries during meetings. It really is the epitome of rudeness. It's that person essentially saying "although you are her in-person, something more important may be happening in my email inbox" or "although I'm meeting with you, I'm far too important to focus solely on you."

I'm sure not everyone thinks these thoughts consciously, but they are there inside.

Nonetheless, I do find having immediate, portable access to my email a mostly good thing. My wife strongly disagrees!

Well it's been about three days and I'm finally getting the hang of the Mac. However, getting to this point was no simple task.

Having switched computers before (PC to PC) I understand that there is a lot of work required to get your files transferred, get software reinstalled etc., and much of this was the same with the conversion to the Mac. However, given the difference in software (especially having to use Entourage vs. Outlook), this was a bit more complex.

It's somewhat crazy that despite the fact that Microsoft makes both Entourage and Outlook that it would not be easier to move your old email from the PC to the Mac, but I'm guessing Microsoft isn't that keen on users doing this, and so have not made this very easy. I used O2M by Little Machines to transfer the files, and for the most part they've moved over ok.

I also moved my office files over by putting on an external hard drive and then transferring them to the MacBook Pro. This was pretty straightforward.

Aside from getting things transferred, simply learning Apple way of doing things, such as installing software, saving files to folders etc. is a bit challenging at first. A lot of trial and error. I'd agree that generally Apple's OSX operating system is pretty intuitive, but after so many years of using Windows, it still requires an adjustment.

The hardest part, I'd have to say, is using Office 2004 for Mac vs. the Office for PC I was using. The layout and menus are a bit different, and I'd become very proficient in the PC operation of these programs. Plus things like keyboard controls are different which makes the change have more of a learning curve. Generally speaking the programs are the same, but some things certainly are different and have required a lot of searching the Web to find answers to how to do things. Thankfully many of my same questions have already been answered by others on forums and newsgroups, so I've quickly located them as needed.

This notebook is plenty fast, and its boot time (from cold start, or from sleep) is SO much faster than any PC I've owned. I remember Windows booting more quickly when it was new, and then getting slower along the way, so I'm not sure if the Mac will exhibit this same trait or not. Obviously I'm hoping not.

I have found that a few of the software programs I was using won't work on Mac, which I knew going in. The hardest adjustment will be not using Yahoo Music Unlimited and my Zen MP3 player on this machine. However, I can still download songs and put them on the Zen using my wife's PC.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with the choice, and I have not yet even started to upload pictures, or video recordings into the Mac to see how cool and easy it is to work with them (as I've heard). So I'm hoping that once I do, I'll be even more pleased with the switch.

I'm having a hard time believing it myself, but after some consideration, I've decided to make the switch from Windows to Mac.

My MacBook Pro is set to arrive tomorrow and I'm quite excited about the change, and looking forward to learning the Mac OS and starting a new "life" as a Mac user.

I can't quite pinpoint the exact moment I decided to make the shift, but it came fairly quickly. My Gateway 200X ultraportable has been a great computer, and has served me well over the last 3+ years, but it is starting to fall apart and needs to be replaced.

Although I spent a lot of time first looking at potential PC notebook replacements on CNET,PC World, and other sites, I started to realize that I'm quite sick of the constant Windows OS crashes I have to deal with, and the incredibly frequent and annoying updates that I need to download and install for Windows. From what I understand, Mac users don't experience nearly as many of these issues.

As I started to consider the move, which for me is considerable (at least in my mind right now) given that I've only ever used PCs, I found there were a few colleagues who have previously made this shift, and they were unanimously happy they did so. They reported no major compatibility issues regarding the key business apps such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint, which was a concern I had.

I waited a bit before taking the plunge in hopes that Apple would release a 12" ultraportable MacBook, which has been widely rumored for a while as a possibility. But this past week at the Mac press conference, no such system was announced, so I decided it was time to get moving on this.

I did a good amount of research, but it was ultimately a trip to an Apple Store during a recent trip to L.A. that made me go with the MacBook Pro vs. the MacBook. The top of the line MacBook is very close in specs to the MacBook Pro, but after touching and holding the MacBook Pro, and considering things a bit more, I was convinced that the Pro was the right choice for me.

I'm sure it won't be totally simple to switch over, but I'm expecting it to go rather quickly and easily, and I'm looking forward to a long-lasting relationship with Apple and my MacBook Pro.

Audio books continue to grow in sales year after year. With the massive sales of iPods, MP3 players, and MP3-enabled cell phones, not to mention the rapid adoption of all-thing-tech by the younger generation (who I'd guess would rather be listening to their iPod than cracking a book), these sales are sure to grow.

According to a BusinessWeek article from April "In 2005, the Audio Publishers Assn. (APA) estimated the size of the
total audiobook market at $871 million, up 4.7% from the previous year.
The APA also released a 2006 study that found almost 25% of the U.S.
population listens to audiobooks." I'm certain that these numbers have only continued to grow in the past year or so, especially as more titles are becoming available every day.

My wife has joined in on the fun by recently launching an audio book ecommerce site with the clever title of AnEarForBooks.com. If you're interested in exploring the world of audio books, I encourage you to download one (or more) and give them a listen. We find them quite enjoyable on long road trips to Tahoe and Yosemite, and also while traveling by plane.

I can’t disclose names at this time, but this is one of many deals to
come. With Podbridge, we are in conversations with all
of the top podcast publishers on the internet and the solution is being warmly
received.

This is because the Podbridge solution is the only one
available that provides

It is abundantly clear that advertisers will require tracking information for
podcast advertising as they do for all other online media. To date, some advertisers have supported
podcasts solely on the basis of downloads (which is a somewhat meaningless number
given that a download does not equate to a listen or view), but this is already
changing.

Forward-thinking podcast publishers, such as Forbes, see
this trend and know it’s only a matter of time before tracking actual
consumption, and having the ability to target and rotate podcast ads will be
one of the main things required in order to build long-term, sustainable
revenue from their podcasting efforts.

My cousin Steve
is moving to Bangkok at the end of the month in order to
take a new job assignment. While he told
me about this over dinner recently, I had the idea that he should look into the
Slingbox as a possible way to be able to view American television while in Bangkok.

Given that
he is keeping his apartment in S.F., as well as his cable and internet
connection (as he’s generously allowing a few lucky friends and family members to
use the apartment from time to time), it appeared to me that he had all of the
necessary ingredients for a good “eXtreme Slingbox” implementation.

Steve loved the idea and quickly ordered the Slingbox as well as two of their
powerline adaptors (as I knew this would be the easiest way to get his Internet
connection from his router on one side of the apartment to the TV setup on the
other side).

After
opening the boxes, surveying its contents, and looking at the brief-yet-straightforward
instructions, it was very clear that the people at Slingbox have put a lot of
thought and effort into making the installation as easy as possible. However,
after spending 3+ hours getting this set up (!), I can say pretty definitively
that the “average” user is going to find setting up their Slingbox a decent challenge.

The basics
of putting the cables into the Slingbox was pretty straightforward, but of
course I have hooked up a lot of things to my TV and stereo before (a DVD
player, a Philips Streamium device, etc.) and so I had a good idea of what to
do. But, I’m quite certain that my best
friend or Mom, or many other potential Slingbox users, would have been challenged
by this simple step (no offense Mom!)

Once I
installed the Slingbox software on Steve’s computer, it walked me through the
setup process, which included downloading the latest software and firmware
update (a firmware update is always a red light to me in terms of making
something easy for the average user). However,
I kept losing connection with the Slingbox and so I had to cancel and relaunch the
installation software several times (and one time I had to uninstall and
reinstall it entirely on his computer in order to complete the installation.)

A key part
of the setup process is to set your router to allow your computer to access the
Slingbox while remotely connected to the internet through another network (vs.
your home network). The software offered
a turnkey way to set this up, unfortunately Steve’s router was not configured
to allow
this, and in order to get this working I had to access the router to
change the settings, which required having the router password. However, the person who had set up Steve’s
network more than two years ago had changed the password, which Steve no longer
had (which was not surprising as he’s never accessed the router since). Without the password, I had to reset the
router, which reset the factory default settings resulting in an inability to
access the Internet. To remedy this
situation, I had to call Linksys to figure out how to get the router to work
with SBC/Yahoo. Once that was done, the Slingbox was able to successfully auto-configure
the router access it needed.

We were
just about done when we realized that there was no sound on Steve’s computer
when the Slingbox was operating. It took
a call to Slingbox support to learn that certain cables had to be removed from
Steve’s existing set up, and replaced with another Slingbox cable. To his credit, the support person was very
quick to identify the problem and provide the proper solution.

Once we
were done, we were able to operate the product, which is very slick. Essentially, you hook your Slingbox up to the
Internet and your cable box, and then via your computer you can actually access
and control all of the functions of
your TV, cable, and DVR/Tivo from anywhere in the world where you are connected
to the Internet. The Slingbox comes with
some infrared transmitters that literally act as your pseudo-remote control and
when you use a function of your remote control on your computer, it sends the
proper commands to the Slingbox and then the Slingbox sends the commands to
your TV/Cable via the transmitters (a very cool concept, yet setting up the
transmitters is probably going to provide yet another challenge to the average
user).

The audio
and video streamed quite well on the computer, but the video image is pretty
small and can’t be increased past a certain point (which I imagine will change
as Slingbox figures out how to further compress the video files).

It will be
a few weeks before we know if this setup actually provides Steve what we hope
it will – access to regular U.S. television programming, as well as
the premium channels on his cable, and the ability to record and view
shows/sporting events/etc. via the DVR (as most will air while he is asleep in
Bangkok).

Overall, I’d
say that the Slingbox is a cool technology that dedicated TV viewers who are on
the move (such as mobile professionals) will find quite appealing. However, Slingbox is going to have to
simplify the set up even more (if that’s even possible) or be prepared to
handle a lot of support calls.

Over at GigaOm, Robert Young has an interesting post about the growth of social networking as "a micro-phenomenon of a much larger macro-trend
that the Internet has spawned since its birth… digital self-expression."

He points out how regular people now have many ways to express themselves, especially on the Web. We see this to be true in blogs, podcasts, MySpace pages, Flickr albums, and more.

This phenomenon can clearly be seen in China:

The number of podcasts is booming (China Web2.0 review points to a study saying there are approximately 145,000 Chinese podcasts, showing nearly 300% growth in the last four months.)

One report predicts that there will be more than 60 million bloggers in China by the end of 2006 (up from about 36M currently).

Add in the success in China of the American Idol-type show Super Girl, where citizens in China can watch amateur female singers perform and then vote for their favorite winners via SMS, and personal expression is obviously raging in China.

I think that what is happening in China is particularly interesting, given that until recently there weren't very many ways for the citizens to speak out, much less be heard. Clearly Chinese citizens (particularly the younger set) are rapidly embracing the new technologies that are giving them a voice. This bodes particularly well for China web businesses that can tap into this fervor, and then build a scalable business model around it.